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Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

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Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#281

Post by Lazare »

azinman2 wrote: post #147
emsign wrote: post #136

Increasing the count and efficiency of mitochondria is gonna be a big deal. ME/CFS is caused by these organelles not working as they should.

It’s not clear to me CFS is really a thing. To me it’s a catch all BS diagnosis that basically says “we don’t know what this is, so we’re calling it CFS”.

I mean, the S in CFS stands for "syndrome", which is "a set of medical signs and symptoms which are correlated with each others [...] When a syndrome is paired with a definite cause this becomes a disease." (From wikipedia.)

So I mean, yeah, that literally does mean "we don't know what this is, and we don't know what's causing it, so we're dumping everything that looks like it in a bucket while we do more research". But that doesn't mean it's not a real thing; it means that we don't know what it is or what's causing it (and that it may well not be a single thing at all).

That's pretty different than saying "it's not a thing at all".

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#282

Post by cpncrunch »

Lazare wrote: post #280
cpncrunch wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there isn't any evidence of mitochondria problems in ME/CFS, even though a lot of studies have looked at them.

I don't think that's quite right? There's been a fair amount of evidence pointing at possible issues, but there's no clear answer due to poor (or just different) study design, small sample sizes, different criteria across studies, different sample groups, etc. So eg https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10... reviewed 19 studies, many of which did find "evidence of mitochondria problems", but conc…

No well replicated studies.

>they seem to function differently

Except there isn't evidence showing this.

>5 tried to check for differences in mitochondrial respiration between ME/CFS patients and healthy controls, and 4 of the 5 found notable differences

But did they look at the same thing? I also don't think that includes all the studies that failed to show mitochondrial differences, and failures to replicate previous studies.

There is the recent Ryback study (currently a preprint) which failed to replicate Fluge and Mella's result, and showed no difference from controls. There is the Tomas study which showed no difference in the ATP profile test from controls. Also, a 2019 Tomas study showed no difference in respiration between patients and controls.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#283

Post by SamBam »

ge96 wrote: post #154
kbrkbr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the ancient mystery of why we need sleep might have just been answered. I would be very surprised if sleep would serve only one purpose. In complex interconnected systems you usually don't get far with monocausal explanations.

When I'm awake for a very long time (32hrs+) it feels like there is poison built up in my mind, then sleep clears it up/feel better. Also if you lift in the mornings you feel lack of sleep/alcohol sleep disruption.

I feel this too, and always wondered if it related to the glymphatic system [1].

This is the system that clears out metabolic waste from the brain which builds up over time, and it's theorized that during slow-wave sleep in particular, the slow waves help pump out this waste fluid through microscopic channels the open up.

AFIAK, there were some researchers that were wondering if a drug of some kind could force this to happen more quickly, thus cutting down the amount we need to sleep. (Probably a bad idea.)

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glymphatic_system

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#284

Post by SamBam »

bearl wrote: post #214
bsenftner wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how the few famous people that do not sleep at all, what's going on in their biochemestry? I don't mean celebrities, there are a few people who became famous because they do not sleep. They hold 2 complete careers, one during the day and one at night to keep from getting bored.

We microsleep whenever we blink. Or at least that was the old science, maybe there’s a new explanation.

I've never heard that, it doesn't really make sense given what we know about REM sleep and slow-wave sleep, and the Wikipedia page on blinking doesn't mention that at all, not even as an old theory.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#285

Post by [deleted] »

hearsathought wrote: post #144
eutropia wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA also acknowledges this: > There could well be many other functions that have since joined in with the sleep cycle (such as memory consolidation), but the authors hypothesize that mitochondrial function is the process that underlies all of them. If you need oxygen, then you need sleep!

> If you need oxygen, then you need sleep! Do plants sleep? Don't some insects, like flies, live without any sleep?

[deleted]

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#287

Post by Tokumei-no-hito »

crocowhile wrote: post #91
derbOac wrote: post #67

The paper is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09261-y Not an expert in this area, but the essay feels a bit like an oversimplification. Not only is this in flies, but I wasn't entirely convinced this isn't about rest rather than sleep per se. It's a cool paper, interesting to read and read about, but my hunch is there's more steps in the chain, and am not sure it will replicate in humans or even mamma…

It is an awful paper and I am a very expert in this area. This is science, alas.

you are arguably the most educated expert on the subject available on HN. any chance you will share your thoughts on here, your blog or mastodon?

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#288

Post by kwoff »

"This also strongly suggests that sleep and hunger are both tied to mitochondrial function and energy balance (the latter was already pretty clear!), and that aerobic organisms are constantly adjusting for both fueling their mitochondria and giving them (especially the ones in the central nervous system) some down time for repair and recovery. As the authors say, rather eloquently, “electrons flow through the respiratory chains of the respective feedback controllers like sand in the hourglass that determines when balance must be restored”. There could well be many other functions that have since joined in with the sleep cycle (such as memory consolidation), but the authors hypothesize that mitochondrial function is the process that underlies all of them. If you need oxygen, then you need sleep!"

yawn :) I was wondering if sleep and hunger are tied to mitochondrial function, then wouldn't breathing be affected? If you're hungry, you're not getting enough glucose for respiration. If you're suffocating....

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#289

Post by tomhow »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #77
satvikpendem wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't get less oxygen the more you sleep, but sure. You're not understanding the construction of the sentence. "Flies gather more the more manure there is" means if there is more manure, then flies gather more; if you get less oxygen, you sleep more. You understood the sentence as, you sleep more therefore you get less oxygen, which is actually the converse of what I said, which is incorrect. No logical implica…

[flagged]

> Maybe try quadrupling down on the incorrect thing you said, that usually works out well.

> Learn tact. You do not have it.

We've asked you before to avoid personal swipes like this on HN.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

#290

Post by BrenBarn »

To what extent can this generalize from flies to humans? I've been very interested in dreams and read a decent amount of research on sleep and its functions, but most of that was years ago so my knowledge may be outdated. But my impression was that there are non-negligible differences in how sleep works (e.g., in terms of brain activity) between say, birds and mammals, or even one mammal to another. Certainly there could be some basal functions that are shared in flies but it seems a stretch to say "it all comes down to" that. As someone said in another comment, it's unclear what makes this about sleep rather than rest.
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